


ὄφρα δέ μοι ζώει καὶ ὁρᾷ φάος ἠελίοιο ἄχνυται (As Long as He Lives and Sees the Sunlight He Will Grieve)

by celzmccelz



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, The Iliad - Homer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-15
Updated: 2011-10-15
Packaged: 2017-10-24 15:44:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/265192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celzmccelz/pseuds/celzmccelz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thetis was never happy in her marriage to Peleus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ὄφρα δέ μοι ζώει καὶ ὁρᾷ φάος ἠελίοιο ἄχνυται (As Long as He Lives and Sees the Sunlight He Will Grieve)

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a very long time ago. It complies with some aspects of the Thetis myth but not others.

There was a prophecy that the sea-nymph Thetis would give birth to a son who was greater than his father. It was the old magic of Mother Gaea at work, part of her ancient plot to wreak revenge on Zeus for the suffering of her last-born children; the same magic that had brought Athena bursting forth fully formed from Zeus’ forehead, after he devoured Metis for fear of the child she had conceived.

And Zeus desired Thetis, for she was beautiful, but he could not lie with her, lest she bear a son who would kill him as he had killed his own father Cronus, and Cronus his own father Sky. Nor could he allow any other god to get her with child. So against her will he married her to Peleus, a mortal.

Thetis’ husband was a great king, a descendant of Zeus himself, but only a man, and the son that Thetis bore him was only a man.

The greatest among men, yes, the best of warriors, but he went down into death’s dark house all the same—he who but for a chance might have ruled the universe.

***

Thetis was never happy in her marriage to Peleus. She lay with him, and she bore him a child because the king of the gods had commanded it, but she didn’t love him. She longed for the sea and for her sisters, her fellow Nereids. She missed the cool green depths of Poseidon’s ocean, and hated being shackled to the land, to one place. She tried very hard not to hate her husband. It was not his fault. But she resented him nonetheless, resented her captivity. It would be futile to curse Zeus, but Peleus was only a man. She could safely hate Peleus, in the privacy of her own mind, and no one would be the wiser.

Her son, however, she could not hate.

All through the long months of her pregnancy, she had intended to leave immediately after the child was born. She had consoled herself by imagining how she would put the child in his nurse’s arms, get up off of her childbed, and walk straight into the sea, never to return.  
Her labor was long and difficult, for the boy was big, and there was something not quite right, that old power of the earth-mother twisting inside her, trying to find release, to accomplish its purpose. For a brief span of time Thetis felt pain as mortals feel. Then the child slid out of her all in a rush and something tore inside of her. The women around her shrieked and clutched at each other as the ichor that ran in her veins instead of blood poured out onto the bed along with the afterbirth. Then her body, which was not nor had ever been human, healed itself, and the screaming boy was placed in her arms.

And Thetis looked down into his face and was lost. “My son,” she whispered. “You are my son.” The best of the Achaeans, both a gift and a curse. She looked on him, and she loved him. She held him close as he suckled at her breast, a good, strong baby, and thought of what he would be like as a man. Strong and beautiful and perfect. But even then in that first hour she mourned him, for she knew that he was mortal and that he must die, and that she herself must live forever.

This is the only pain the gods feel, their love for us, fragile, ephemeral human beings, who blossom to beauty only once and too quickly, and then fade away as soon.

So Thetis stayed ten years in Peleus’ house after Achilles was born. Her husband never lay with her again after the birth of their son, for he could see she did not desire him, and no man may force a goddess, not even if she is his wife.

But at the end of the tenth year, her longing for the sea became too strong, and so she called Achilles to her and told him she was leaving.

He looked at her very solemn and said, “Where are you going, mother?”

She answered, “I am going back to the sea, where I was born. To where my sisters dance in the river ocean, and the tide-stream whirls the salty depths. Back to the deep places and the darkness and the silence.”

He said, “When are you coming back?”

And it hurt her heart to see the hope in his eyes, the expectation that she would not leave him long.

She answered, sorrowing, “I will never return to your father, child. That is not to be. But I will return to you. When you need me, when I miss you, I will come to you. I will always find you.”

Then Thetis walked down to the beach and out into the sea, and was free, finally free, after a decade of unhappiness.

But her son’s grey eyes were like iron hooks tugging at her heart.


End file.
